In January 2021, I put out a call for wedding vendors who would be willing to tell me about their experiences working weddings during COVID.
I did this because if you really want to know what a pandemic wedding is like, you should talk to a wedding vendor. Weddings are, after all, kind of our job.
Based on those interviews I wrote two different stories.
The article you’re currently reading is about what it’s like to go to a wedding during COVID.
This other article is about what wedding vendors wish their couples knew right now.
In both stories, all but one of the vendors asked to be anonymous because they are afraid of ramifications for sharing their experiences.
So, you want to know what it’s like to go to a wedding during COVID? Let’s ask a wedding vendor.
The above image is a real story told to me by a wedding vendor. The people involved have been anonymized. Illustration: Joie Thongsavath
You can’t plan for human behavior
“It’s been hard for me to figure out how to tell couples that no matter how safe they think they’re being, it’s not actually going to be as safe as they think it’s going to be,” said one photographer who shot 11 weddings in 2020.
She noticed that what couples think will happen is often radically different from what actually happens on their wedding day — particularly when it comes to how disciplined their guests are.
“I’m wearing a mask, of course, but no one else is,” she said. “There are a lot of people hugging and being very close with each other because they’re just wanting to soak up those emotions that come from being at a wedding … But, like, you don’t get a free pass from COVID.”
Another vendor I spoke with recalled an outdoor wedding she worked in summer 2020. The couple “did a really good job communicating with their guests” about their expectations ahead of their wedding.
“[They were like] ‘Yes, you have to wear masks. Yes, you have to do X, Y, and Z,’ but still, here and there, especially when you’re serving food, people are gonna take off their masks … and sometimes their masks would just stay off.”
Ironically, she thinks this behavior had to do with the couple being outside, a choice many people are making for their wedding days because of the lower rate of infection.
“When you’re outside, for some reason it does feel safer and it is safer, but it doesn’t mean you can suddenly not do anything,” she said. “Keeping distance and wearing a mask are still a part [of it].”
A wedding planner I spoke with seconded this: “What I typically saw last summer was vendors were all wearing masks and then, guests just aren’t even if masks are provided for them. They just aren’t because they’re like, ‘Oh I’m outdoors. It’s fine.’”
Remembering safety protocol is a challenge for all of us right now but it’s a particular challenge at a wedding, vendors said. That’s because weddings are about joy and, unfortunately, the ways that many of us express joy — hugging, dancing, kissing — are exactly the ways that COVID most quickly infects people.
As the photographer above put it: “You want people to not worry about it and have a fun time and just experience that joy but at the same time? I don’t want to get an email from a couple a week after their wedding that said, ‘Hey, somebody tested positive. Our grandpa is sick. Get tested.’”
The above image is a real story told to me by a wedding vendor. The people involved have been anonymized. Illustration: Joie Thongsavath
Alcohol doesn’t help
Things only get more challenging when alcohol is added to the mix.
“It isn’t even that [guests are] forgetting on purpose,” one DJ said. “We’re just having a good time and not thinking about it.”
She’s had a particularly tough time dealing with clients, guests, and other vendors expecting her to be “the mask police,” i.e. using her powers as the DJ to cue people to put their masks back on during the wedding.
“That is reasonable when people aren’t drinking,” she said. “But as soon as people start drinking, everything goes out the window.”
While she said people had gotten better about wearing masks at weddings, particularly near the end of summer 2020, she’s observed a new pattern: “People are dying to be together and want to celebrate harder than ever because they’ve been so cooped up.” That means, “they get really drunk faster and then it’s harder to get them to do what you want them to do like wear a mask.”
“It’s like the initial couples optimism versus the reality of what happens during the flow of a wedding,” said the photographer who shot 11 weddings in 2020. “I mean, it’s hard enough to get everyone to smile and stare at the camera for family photos and that’s usually just like 10 people and for five minutes of like, ‘Can you just do this thing?’ But when you’re dealing with guests being there for like five or six hours and maybe adding alcohol into the mix…”
What about dancing?
I asked the DJ about this and she sighed.
“I feel like there’s been a lot of blame game [and] pointing of fingers amongst vendors of who’s the one who’s responsible,” she said. “I’m like, ‘So, I’m not supposed to tell people to dance… What do you want me to tell them then?’”
It’s hard to police a dance floor, she adds, because she doesn’t know who’s in what household.
“We’re being expected to make decisions and I don’t know! I’m a DJ. I didn’t go to nursing school. I don’t know. I mean, [vendors are] educating ourselves the best that we can but this was never part of our job. That isn’t why we got into this and, you know, by the way we get discouraged, too.”
As a planner, I have heard of couples who host weddings during the pandemic offering other, safer options when it comes to dancing. These have included having people dance at their tables, having only one or two dances such as an anniversary dance among couples, and hosting “dance battles” where one person or household goes on the dance floor at a time.
None of the above, of course, means a couple can’t have a first dance, if they want one, since usually a first dance is just the couple on the dance floor by themselves. Still, vendors caution that unless clear safety measures are in place at a wedding, guests will still be thinking about COVID.
“I feel like the thing that’s on everybody’s mind [at the wedding] is COVID,” said Frances Davis of Hastain Davis Studios. “COVID dominates all the conversations that are happening, which I think is really unfortunate because, you know, at a usual wedding you’re talking about memories and fun stuff that you’ve been up to. [Now] everyone’s just kind of in this like depressed state.”
Are 2021 couples totally screwed?
No. They just need to change what they think of when they think of “a wedding,” say vendors.
This means a guest count that’s much, much smaller than many couples think of when they think of “a wedding.”
“Most of the weddings that I’ve shot [during the pandemic] have been fewer than 20 people and more often than not, fewer than 10 people,” said one photographer. She said that the result has been “pretty amazing.”
“Now we get to have this really intimate, very genuine day where it’s really just about us, why we’re here, and why we’re getting married,” she said.
Another photographer I spoke with mentioned a couple who originally planned to have 150 guests at their wedding. Because of the pandemic, they opted for eight total people: the two of them, four guests, and two vendors.
“We ended [the wedding] with a campfire on the beach [and] a first dance above the waves,” said the photographer. “It was just a really fun time.”
Requiring testing helps a lot, too.
Davis worked a 2020 wedding where the couple required everyone who attended — guests and vendors — to first get a COVID test. It was “one of the most chill and upbeat” weddings she’s been to during the pandemic. “I wasn’t as worried about it or feeling guilty,” she said. “I didn’t have that stress on me.”
Davis’ observation reminded me of a conversation I had with another planner in November 2020. She told me about a 2020 wedding she worked where the bride and groom required anyone who came to their wedding to take a COVID test and quarantine for two weeks before attending.
“It was the most joyful wedding I’ve been to all year,” she said.
“Only eight people?!”
Of course, vendors don’t expect couples to make the choice to change their wedding plans lightly. They know that a new guest list of 15 might not include one partner’s mom because she lives out-of-state or another partner’s grandpa because he’s over 80. Many couples are now also facing the daunting reality of rescheduling their wedding for the second, third, or fourth time.
These are impossible choices that are only made more impossible after nearly a year of pandemic life in the U.S. Any decision to change a wedding takes a huge emotional and financial toil on a couple who really, just wants to get married already.
“We are so emotionally invested [when planning a wedding],” one vendor said. “For these couples who are living through the pandemic, I totally understand the desire to have something to look forward to — to have one happy day.”
Perhaps surprisingly, however, vendors say that during COVID, their happiest clients have been the ones who made the hardest choices.
“All of our couples that got married in 2020 were just basically over the moon about the entire wedding. This is from couples who downsized from 200-person guest counts to pretty much family only,” said one vendor who has done 11 weddings since March 2020.
The couples who made the biggest changes had the best things to say, she adds. “I keep hearing, ‘We wouldn’t have changed it for the world. It turned out to be such an amazing time. We loved it. Sure, it wasn't what we originally had planned but it turned out great.’”
Does a safer wedding even feel like a wedding?
But making these changes is hard and setting rules isn’t sexy. Couples fear that asking their guests to take tests, get vaccinated, or to just stay home will kill the vibe of their day.
“I had that conversation with a number of our 2020 couples,” said the vendor who worked 11 weddings in 2020. “They’re like, ‘What can I do to make it special?’”
It’s a valid concern but it also misses the whole point of a wedding.
“It’s not that you had 200 guests there or that you danced until your feet were killing you,” she said. “That’s a party, and that’s great. But that’s not what makes your wedding day special. The special thing is that you two are getting married.”
I’ve seen this myself
I heard what this vendor said — “The special thing is that you two are getting married” — and it made me think of the one wedding that I’ve worked during the pandemic.
This was a 43-person wedding in October 2020. This couple did everything they could to make sure their wedding was both legal and safe. They cut their guest list by more than 60 people. They redid their seating chart so everyone sat by household, six feet apart. They required masks.
And you know what I saw after all that extra work? A couple who didn’t unclench until everyone left.
The couple isn’t here to share their side of the story so for all I know, I’m wrong. I have also worked more than three dozen weddings including my own and I like to think that I know what joy looks like.
I didn’t see the bride and groom get that blissed out look on their faces until the end of the night when it was just them and their immediate families — a total of 15 or so people whom they had been staying with in the days leading up to the wedding.
Seeing that joy would have been enough to convince me that maybe, 43 people from an untold number of households was not a great idea in the middle of a pandemic but you know what really drove it home for me? Halfway through dinner, the bride burst into tears.
These were not happy “I just got married” tears. These were great, gulping sobs that made me think she was feeling a little like I was: Freaked out to be in a room with 40 people for the first time in seven months.
That experience combined with the dozens of conversations I have had with both couples and vendors have made me believe what I wrote above: The happiest couples are the ones who have made the hardest choices.
So now what?
First, we ask ourselves the most important question in wedding planning: Why? Why are we having a wedding? Why are we having a wedding right now?
To do this, we talk about our as a couple (perhaps using this prioritization worksheet to help). We sit down together and walk through the bullet points of what a COVID safety policy looks like for a wedding. We look at each other and say, “Does this feel the way that we want it to feel?”
If the answer is yes, great. We can plan from that place.
If the answer is no, great. We can plan from that place, too.
Why go to all of this trouble? Because the couples who do suffer less. I’ve seen it again and again and again in the past year. It was also a theme that came up repeatedly in my conversations with vendors.
The ironic thing is that, as businessowners, vendors have nothing to gain — and honestly, quite a bit to lose — from sharing this information with couples. But that’s not why we got into weddings. We got into weddings to celebrate joy.
And as it turns out, it’s much easier to feel joy when you also feel safe.